Just over a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the green light as F1's newest entry for 2026. Building the organization from nothing has entailed a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the United States, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and gets a amused expression when considering the experience.
“You might get a short period reflecting at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a factory team sponsored by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to alter team culture.”
With each day that goes by minds are sharper on the approaching decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal noted earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we perform competently. We want to show that we’re a proper team doing the proper actions on the race track. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Push
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I am confident with this structure, with these individuals, these personnel, there is every reason that we won't be able to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now at more than 400 and intended to reach the goal of six hundred quickly. Complementing their existing facility at the UK base, the team are in the phase of completing an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to build the 2029 engine, set for the 2029 season – for now they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, contrary to the movement in the sport for increased consolidation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of project teams all working on various components of the project at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a protocol where an issue arises and they raise it up to their manager, that manager talks to a leader at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Avoiding management approval for each action is much smoother and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
